Fatherhood
by DangoLovesYou
Summary: Shion has been a single father for five years now, and still has the occasional troubling incident. Hardest, though, are the difficult questions of growing children. "Why don't I have a mommy like the other kids at school?" One-shot


Shion had one foot under the covers and was finally about to go to bed when a familiar call echoed into through his apartment from down the hall, beckoning him.

"Daddy? Daddy!"

With a wary breath, Shion pulled himself back onto his aching feet and ventured out of his room. His eyes were already drooping, and he really didn't feel like turning on the hall light. This decision he regretted when he went ahead and smacked a doorframe. Biting his tongue to keep from hissing in pain, he heard the call again.

"Daddy!"

"I'm coming," he called back, rubbing at his shoulder as he stumbled into his son's room. "Sora? What's wrong?" The boy, recently turned six years old, was sitting up in his bed, with the lamp beside him casting shadows across his wide, eyes. His face glowed red.

"I had another nightmare." Sora's voice was little more than a squeak.

"Another?" Shion asked, halfway between sympathetic and frustrated. At this rate, neither of them would get any sleep. Shion often had to work late into the night, and Sora was something of a "troubled sleeper," as the doctors had said. This wonderfully vague description was all that had been given to him when Shion had gotten him checked for early-onset sleep insomnia.

Sora must have seen the exhaustion in his father's eyes, and wiped a leftover tear from his own. "I'm sorry."

"Nah, nothing to be sorry for," Shion said, taking a couple steps closer and dropping onto the bed. Sora hesitated for a heartbeat before pitching himself into Shion's arms. His tiny limbs were still trembling. "You're okay now, there, little buddy. Daddy's here." Shion soothed, petting Sora's back and his curly auburn locks. He calmed at the touch.

"So," Shion prompted as the boy sat back in his bed, "do you want to talk about it?" Little eyes were pinched shut as he shook her head furiously. "Okay, then. What would you like? A glass of water? A story?" He smiled as his adorable son placed a stubby finger on his chin in thought.

"I have something else. But I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it."

"You're allowed to talk about anything with me, Sora." _Especially if it'll help you sleep. _Although his son was his top priority, and Shion would gladly spend a thousand hours with his son if it meant a night's peaceful sleep for him, being a working single father was just a little tiring. Most of all, he wished he had more energy to dedicate to his family. For now, he was struggling to not let his fatigue show.

"Okay… So, I have a question. I've been wondering about it for kind of a while." Odd. Sora was usually straightforward and to-the-point, no hesitation or pretense involved.

"Ask me anything."

Sora once again closed his eyes, now shrinking as far back into his pillows as he could manage, as if the question hurt to start. He looked Shion dead in the eye, however, when the shaky words finally came.

"Daddy? Why don't I have a mommy like the other kids at school?"

Of Shion's six years of parenting, through all the colds and financial crises and power outages that left him troubled for his little boy's wellbeing, this had to be the hardest moment to stay strong. Instantly, the syllables fell in a downpour upon his heart, pooling in and quickly flooding every synapse of his brain with grief. The welling brought water to his eyes, which he struggled to blink back down.

"Daddy?"

"That's a very good question, Sora, and your curiosity is understandable. I'm just not quite sure how to explain this…" In all honesty, Shion had been hoping he still had a few years before this question, _ the question, _came around. How did he explain, well, everything to his son? And was he supposed to tell him about just the boy's past, or his own? How much was too much? How could he put the boy through the least pain?

Even more relevant, how did he deal with this moment, right now, with his son gazing questioningly into his ruby eyes?

_What time is it? I wonder if it's too late to call Inukashi… God, I wish Mom was still alive, she'd know what to say… _

"Have you ever heard about West Block or No. 6? Maybe you overheard me saying something, or your friends at school?"

"Yeah, I know about No. 6!"

"Okay, then how about we start with you telling me what you know."

"One, two, three, four, five, six! That's how you get to number six. Then comes eight, seven, nine, ten."

_This is going to be harder than I thought. _

"Right. Well, almost right. Seven and then eight. But, have you ever heard of a place called No. 6?"

"I don't think so. What does this have to do with my mommy?"

Shion let out a small sigh. "I'm getting to that. Actually, maybe this is a discussion for another time. It's late. You should be asleep."

"Please, Daddy? Please tell me? I really want to know. All of the other kids have mommies."

Shion's heart twisted in his chest at the sentence, and the boy's look just made it all that much worse. No, no running away from this one.

"Okay, I'll tell you, but you have to promise to go to sleep right after, okay?" This was clearly hard for the boy, almost as hard as it was for Shion. Some things were worthy of exception.

"I promise."

And Shion began a revised version of a shattering tale. It was filled with holes and tripped over itself, but it was something. He told of an evil, controlling place, and a poor city in its shadow. Shion explained how he had found a little baby on the street, with its mother unable to take care of it, and sent it off to safety while he went on to take down the horrible place.

Shion could barely look Sora in the eye as he skipped over the fact that the boy's mother had been dead on the blacktop, the mass murders, the parasite bees, his role in the destruction of No. 6, and Nezumi. A little boy could only handle so much, and Shion was too close to tears to want to stick around much longer.

"When this city was made, there was still no one to take care of you, so I volunteered."

The look on his adoptive son's face broke the last shards of Shion's heart. There was such disbelief, such pain… maybe he should have lied to him. Sora was only a child. What was Shion thinking? God, the boy looked so hurt, but stayed silent at the end of the tale.

"Please say something," Shion begged, trying to swallow the lump in his throat without success.

"Who are you?"

"Sora?"

A tear slipped down a child's cheek.

"…Who are you?"

"Sora, I'm your daddy. I'll always be your daddy."

"You're not my daddy. You don't know who my daddy is. I want my mommy." The words were devastatingly quiet, barely a whisper.

"Sora, don't say that. I'm your daddy. You know that."

"I don't want you! I want my mommy! I WANT MY MOMMY! I WANT MY DADDY AND MOMMY!"

"She's not here, Sora! I don't know who she is! I can't give you your mommy!"

"I want my parents!"

That. That hurt more than Shion could say, more than getting a bullet to the heart that day six years before.

"I am your parent. Who came to you when you were crying? Who always comes when you're having a bad dream?"

"You're not my real mommy or my real daddy!" Sora screamed. He yelled and he sobbed and shook, and scared Shion. And then he clung to him. Shion wasn't sure what was happening, but warm tears were definitely dipping onto his nightshirt, and tiny hands were gripping at his arms, and the shaking was in his lap. Sora stopped speaking, just wept into the closest thing to the only family he'd ever known.

The few toys Shion could afford watched as Sora cried himself to sleep in his daddy's arms.

A/N~

*I apologize for any grammar/spelling errors, as I should really do in every fic. I do proofread, I just miss stuff, and spell check doesn't help.*

Well, there's that. That came out SO weird... I was half-awake and depressed when I wrote it, and it started out being about the explanation of why Sora had two dads instead of a mom and a dad, but that didn't happen. Oh well. [Someone else can take that plot bunny, it's up for grabs.] Then I started this pointless, waste of time continuation... I was wondering how much flack I would get if I reused the name Igarashi Kiseki for this fic ^^;. If you don't know what I'm talking about, random reader, don't worry about it.

For those of you who DO know what I'm talking about: I'm working on chapter 10, guys. It's coming along. April just makes it hard. *insert more pointless excuses here*, /burned at the stake/.


End file.
